A History of Rock Creek Park by Scott Einberger

Author:Scott Einberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

J OSHUA P EIRCE, L INNAEAN H ILL AND A FRICAN A MERICAN S LAVES

Waltzing Camellias and Human Bondage

On an isolated, forested bluff located about two and a half linear miles north of Montrose Park, just south of Peirce Mill and just west of Rock Creek, lies the park’s only historic mansion. Referred to as Klingle Mansion and today serving as Rock Creek Park’s administrative headquarters, the mansion is part of a historic property known as Linnaean Hill. The historic building and grounds has a horticultural and African American slave past.

The eighty-two-acre property was given to Joshua Peirce in the 1820s by his father, Isaac, the original owner of Peirce Mill and most prominent landowner of the time in the Rock Creek Valley. A well-educated individual who spent most of his childhood in the heart of Pennsylvania Quaker country and also married there, Joshua Peirce named his estate Linnaean Hill either out of respect for Swedish botanist Carl Von Linnaeus, who developed the Latin classification system for cataloging plants, or to tap into the success of the Linnaean Botanical Garden and Nurseries, run by William Prince on Long Island, or a combination of the two. Either way, Peirce then set about building an eleven-room mansion and outbuildings using locally quarried blue fieldstone. The owner constructed a greenhouse, nursery, large farmhouse made of stone, springhouse and unique system of curving drives designed to show off his picturesque landscape overlooking Rock Creek. He planted extensively, and Linnaean Hill became a thriving plant nursery. 27

On his property, in addition to the farm staples of oats, rye, corn, potatoes, peas, beans and buckwheat, Peirce planted and cultivated many types of trees and flowering plants. He did this by collecting and then expanding native species; directly purchasing wholesale seedlings, primarily from nurseries in New England; and by using propagation and grafting techniques. D.C. historian and Friends of Peirce Mill program manager Steve Dryden notes in Peirce Mill: Two Hundred Years in the Nation’s Capital that “Peirce’s catalog of 1857 lists approximately 50 varieties of eating and cider apples, 40 kinds of peaches, seventy varieties of pears, thirty kinds of cherries, and 25 apricot hybrids.” Additionally, Peirce had several rows of vineyards—in 1860, records indicate that Peirce produced sixty gallons of red wine. He also cultivated pawpaws, Balm of Gilead, white pine, Norway spruce, several types of fir trees and hemlock. 28

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